The PS, like the Confederate flag, is a symbol of racism and hatred for most migrants in Finland

In states like South Carolina, where Dylann Roof mass murdered nine people on June 18 at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and after an ongoing debate the Confederate flag was taken down from senate house grounds today. Instead of starting a race war which Roof wanted to ignite, his killings awoke us to the oppression and suffering that the Confederate flag continues to represent.

This is not an essay about the Roof killings or the Confederate flag per se, but an opportunity to ask what are today the symbols of racism, hatred and white Finnish supremacy.

I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future an activist like Bree Newsome below, who took the Confederate flag down last month, would do the same thing to the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* flag.

The PS has not only victimized, ostracized and attacked migrants in a hostile manner in its climb to claw power, it has become for the majority of migrants and minorities in Finland a symbol of oppression just like the Confederate flag is to blacks in the United States.

Disagree? A recent example of this hostility is Olli Sademies, a PS substitute councilman, who wrote that Africans should be forcibly sterilized.

The PS may want to play down this incident but we won’t forget. We cannot forget because we love our children and grandchildren and want them to live in a country that is inclusive and respects them.

Bree Newsome takes down the Confederate flag on June 27. Read full story here.

Sademies isn’t the only PS politician that wants Africans sterilized. Kai Haavisto wrote in 2013 that Africans should be chemically castrated before they are granted asylum in this country.

Haavisto, like many former and present party members, suggested as well that Finland’s refugee problem could be solved by exporting rice to Africa.

I can list countless posts of former and present PS members to show that the party is violent and hostile to migrants. One of them even offered a medal after a white Finn entered a pizzeria in Oulu and killed a Muslim in cold blood and injured another person before taking his life.

Yes, this is the very party that claims that it has nothing against immigrants.

But wait a minute…There was one municipal candidate called Amon Rautiainen who wrote and asked people to kill the prime minister and finance minister of this county and that Muslims should be boiled alive.

The PS logo is already a symbol of oppression and hatred for many migrants and minorities living in Finland. It will only be a matter of time when it will be taken down in the same exemplary manner as Newsome did with the Confederate in June.

* The Finnish name of the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English-language names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings